The short piece is built purely from piano samples, recorded both playing in traditional way and as an unconventional percussive instrument, hitting or rubbing some parts of the instrument. The piece involves the use of complex DSP processes throughout. Convolution processes, selective spectrum saturation, and resonant notch bank filtering are used primarily with the addition of numerous other processes on more select occasions throughout the composition. The piece pays homage to Hugh Le Caine and his electroacoustic compositions, in particular to his Study No. 1 for Player Piano and Tape (1957). Here the idea is to transform the original samples so deeply that they could be perceived as pure synthetic sounds. So I have tried to merge the "musique concrète" and the world  of synthesizer devices.

Piano study I

Now I will do nothing but listen...
I hear all sounds running together,
combined, fused or following,
Sounds on the city, sounds of the day and night...
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

"Paysage marin avec bateaux et hydravion" is a short piece inspired by the World Soundscape Project. This project was based on the discovery and recognition of the musicality in the whole world itself, and resulted in an approach which employs both natural and urban sounds, including sounds created by machines and labour, in the composition of music. The quotation above was not included casually, but is, in fact, taken from the reference book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World by R.M. Schafer.
The piece includes recordings of natural and ambient sounds. These sounds are filtered, modified and re-organized, and then used as the basis for a short music piece. Sound elements, both natural and derived from the engine or the machinery of a vessel, are then introduced, elaborated, mixed, and overlapped several times, in order to give birth to an evocative sound landscape. Lastly, the sound of a seaplane taking-off becomes the fundamental of the final chord.
The goal of this short work is to bring forth the voices, and aesthetic value, of each of these objects, and to use these sounds in an artistic way, and not simply document them. The underlying question is: “could the whole world be viewed and manipulated as a protean musical instrument?”

Paysage Marin Avec Bateaux Et Hydravion


Körper is an acousmatic piece entirely based on the elaboration of an acoustic pulse sequence which was produced in the course of a MRI diagnostic test. The aesthetic idea implied in the composition refers to the topical and controversial theme known as "global control and censorship”. Through the examination of the constant and continuous information flow, which is either consciously or unconsciously produced by everyone, it is possible to accomplish a condition of control; that condition ought to benefit the national and global security.
The question is: How deep or intrusive should the control on individuals be in order guarantee global well-being and security?
At the moment, there is no univocal answer. Control is not only coercive - it can take the pleasant and subtle appearance of a custom-tailored set of information, directly injected into the communication flows usually employed by individuals. As the occasional intrusion into the personal communication flow is barely noticeable, could the large mass of information, imposed to the users of digital devices, produce a sort of control on the behavior and habits of the individuals? Has that sort of control only a commercial intention?
If nowadays cameras and sensors constantly watch movements of the individuals in cities and buildings, can we assume that in the future cells and chemical reactions in our bodies will be scanned and examined in order to gather information to be collected, stored and processed?
Technically speaking the composition uses exclusively a short audio recording of a MRI test.
A large number of processes and signal elaboration modules are applied in order to subdue the crude audio sample to the compositional requirements.
Spectral editing and resonant filters are chained in order to isolate restricted areas in the whole sound object. The foundation material is clearly revealed only at the very end of the piece. The piece was composed at ZKM studios in Karlsruhe.

Körper

τὸ ἀντίξουν συμφέρον καὶ ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν καὶ πάντα κατ' ἔριν γίνεσθαι

What opposes unites, and the finest attunement stems from things bearing in opposite directions, and all things come about by strife.

μεταβάλλον ἀναπαύεται

It rests by changing.

ξυνὸν γὰρ ἀρχὴ καὶ πέρας ἐπὶ κύκλου περιφερείας

Concerning the circumference of a circle the beginning and the end are common.

Herakleitos of Ephesos Fragments 8, 84 and 103

Une rencontre (2013) is intended as a “virtuoso” piece where short vocal samples are deeply processed together with acoustic instruments samples and synthesized elements in order to achieve or at least tending toward a total fusion of these elements. It is not just a mixing work, but instead it is the fusion of more sound objects in one, mainly through convolution algorithms. In this way I especially researched for a spectral merging of voice and acoustic or electronic instruments.
I intentionally propose an artificial procedure where the allocation of formantic regions is extracted from audio samples of singing voices, and subsequently superimposed to audio samples of traditional acoustic instruments or even to synthesized sounds. The original formants of the acoustic and synthesized sounds have been partly preserved in some moments, while the formants coming out from voices have been added or sometimes have replaced them, therefore in few points an overload of harmonics has been deliberately caused in order to experiment an emphasis of the expressive strength and emotional communication of the resulting timbre. The work involves also the use of other DSP processes throughout: selective spectrum saturation, resonant notch bank filtering, multiple delays, and distortion. In some isolated moments the output of a process is injected in a granularization module, in order to achieve a subtle and mutant texture.
The title reveals the aesthetic sense of the work, where a relevant meeting can be not just an encounter, but also the occasion for a mutual exchange, therefore everything and the whole of the world are in continuous transformation, by means of mutual confrontation.

Une Rencontre

R-evo is a short acousmatic piece about the idea of changes, by mean of disruption, evolutions or revolutions. Some times a change is a fusion of different points of view, some times the change is simply giving up a habit. Some times a slow process, some times an abrupt overturn or a revelation. Some times future changes seem to be disquieting, but the piece offers at end a cloudless scenario. In this piece short vocal samples are deeply processed together with acoustic instruments samples derived from a fragment by Maurice Ravel extracted from Daphnis et Chloé and with synthesized elements in order to achieve or at least tend toward a total fusion of these elements. It is not just a mixing work, but rather a fusion of more sound objects in one, mainly through convolution algorithms. The work involves also the use of other DSP processes: selective spectrum saturation, resonant notch bank filtering, multiple delays, and distortion.

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